User blog:PegasusMan/Monthly Blog 3 - Writing Revisions
«« Monthly Blog 2 Monthly Blog 4 »» ---- Hello Donkey Kong Wiki users! PegasusMan here! In this Monthly Blog, I'll be giving you the best tips on how to ensure that what you write is in the best format possible. Beware; there is some English grammar involved with this, but it's still pretty straightforward and all that confusing. News The Char-Char cursor, which will represent the month of October, or, more specifically, Halloween, will be added to the wiki's code shortly... and this one is my favorite. It was by far the hardest cursor to design and pull off, but once I did, it was fabulous. The pointer part of the cursor is unique in that it should make it easier for you to highlight text. Want to see what cursor will come next month? Check out Monthly Cursors for the entire schedule! After two months (last month ended in a tie; from now on, if a Monthly Poll ends in a tie, it will be "lugged on" another month to let more people vote, subsequently hopefully making the results not equal), this Monthly Poll has a winner: 30 '''people vote yes to adding a slider to the main page, where '''29 people vote no. There will be a slider added to the main page! Sorry for all who voted no! I plan to continue posting Monthly Polls over what we can add to the wiki, for that's what I feel needs to be addressed before we can mess around with useless polls (i.e. "who is your favorite Donkey Kong character," etc.). Writing Revisions Almost every English speaker in this Earth dislikes something about the English language. For me, I'd say that it would be what I'm writing about today: re-reading my work to make sure the words fit together and make logical sense. Sometimes I notice myself writing a run-on sentence, in which case I stop, re-read, and revise. And that's exactly what you should do if you're unsure; after all, everything we publish here at Donkey Kong Wiki (and every other wiki for that matter) is available to the entire Earth, and will be forever (unless, of course, we go back and revise...). Yes, it does sound scary, a little bit frightening, or even threatening, but that's what editors do. You can think of yourself as a newspaper editor for 1,227 articles all related to Donkey Kong. Every page should be in its best shape possible; nothing should be too ''subtle (albeit loing words), or too hard to understand. So how do you achieve this, you may ask. Well, let's first talk about some simple English grammar in terms of sentences. A complete sentence is defined as something that contains "a subject, a verb, and a conjunction." If you know what a subject and a verb is, you're already ahead of the game; good job! A conjunction is less known than a subject and a verb, but still very simple and easy to understand. Subjects A subject (or subjects) of a sentence is, you guessed it, literally the "subject" of the sentence. In other words, it is usually what the sentence is about. Take, for example, this sentence: "Drinking the potion quickly, '''Diddy Kong' choked." The subject is bolded. "Diddy Kong" is the subject here, since he is doing the actions, or the verbs. Verbs Verbs are perhaps the easiest things to spot in a sentence besides the subject; they are the words that describe doing an action. Example: "Drinking the potion, Diddy Kong laughed." The verbs are italicized. "Drinking" and "laughed" are the verbs here, since they describe that Diddy is doing. Pretty simple, yeah? Clauses/ Conjunctions Now onto conjunctions... Before I go into conjunctions, let's talk about clauses. Clauses are basically wannabe sentences. There are two types of clauses: independent clauses (which could be a sentence on their own), and dependent clauses (which cannot be sentences on their own). Here are some examples: "Because Donkey woke up late this morning, all he had was a banana." The independent clause is bolded, and the dependent clause is italicized. ''As said before, independent clauses can stand on their own as a complete thought, where dependent clauses cannot. Make sense? If not, here's another example. "'Donkey is an ape', ''and King K. Rool is a Kremling." Just like before, the independent clause is bolded, and the dependent clause is italicized. Try re-reading each clause to yourself, and see which one sounds complete. "Donkey is an ape" should sound complete, where "and King K. Rool is a Kremling" should not sound complete. Okay, so now that you know about clauses, onto conjunctions. Almost done! Back to that last example above: "Donkey is an ape, and King K. Rool is a Kremling." A conjunction is a word (or words) that connects an independent clause to a dependent clause. Can you guess where it would be for the example above? If you answered "and," you're correct. "and" connects the two clauses together, making one complete sentence. There are other conjunctions too, like "for," "but," "or," etc. Special Cases In some situations, where a sentence must be longer, you'll need to have more than one subject (which is totally fine and grammatically correct), more than one verb, and thus more than one conjunction. Here's an example from the Diddy Kong page: Eventually, Donkey and Diddy managed to defeat King K. Rool and the Kremling Krew. The subjects are bolded, the verbs are italicized, and the conjunctions are underlined. "Eventually" is an adverb, which is a verb that can be used to substitute for a verb, but that's something I don't want to get into. To get your sentences to sound this good, re-read your writing. Read it out loud. Reading it out loud helps more than you just reading it in your head. If you spot something that doesn't sound right, re-read again and revise. It's what editing is all about. Post any questions as a comment! Top contributor Congratulations Saruhikofushimis! You have earned the award of top contriutor, coming in first place with 66 contributions! Keep up the good work during these busy days! ---- Terminus of blog..._ Category:Blog posts